The masked man puts the gun to Avery’s temple. It’s almost gentle, the way he does it, the way he places his other hand tenderly at the base of her throat. Then he jerks his head toward the girl on the mattress.
“Fuck her.”
I almost choke on my response. “Fuck her yourself.”
He presses the gun into Avery’s flesh more insistently. “Fuck her, or I shoot this one in the head.”
Ah. There it is. The curtain comes tumbling down, letting in the light. This is their next move. It’s not enough for me to torture Avery, or for Avery to let me do it.
I meet Avery’s eyes. I can’t do this. Not to some poor girl whose only crime is likely being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They’re going to get us where it hurts. They’re going to force us to sacrifice an innocent.
A nameless pawn in exchange for the Queen of Verona.
I shouldn’t even be entertaining the idea of how to get through this. I definitely shouldn’t be putting Avery on some pedestal that makes her worth more than the crying girl on her hands and knees before us. Because Avery and me - we’re not even an us. We’re not together. I mean physically, we’re together in this unbelievably fucking depraved situation, but we’ve never said that we’re together. She doesn’t love me. I don’t love her, not really. I did, once, but that was another life.
It doesn’t matter. What’s left of my conscience recoils from the thought of doing this in front of her. It was one thing when I got fucked by the Harley Quinn knockoff. That hurt, sure, and I’ll never be able to sleep again without the image of her on top of me - but this right here is something much darker.
I don’t know I’m clenching my fists until one of my fingernails draws blood from my palm. I look around at the cameras, observing the angles they capture, the dark corners they can’t reach. My mind does all sorts of calculations as I notice the way Avery is being held in one of those dark corners, outside of the camera’s fields. My stomach drops as I begin to understand what this will look like when I fuck this girl I don’t know to save the girl I love.
When I rape one girl to save another.
Put it this way: it won’t look like I’m a captive down here. It will look like I’m a captor. I think of the newspaper each morning with my prints all over it, the way these cameras are angled, even the very first night we were here, and Avery, herself, thought I’d fucking kidnapped her. We’re going to die down here, because the only way to make it look like it was me who did this, is to make sure there is nobody else to blame. That sickening realization spreads through my veins like poison, hot and sharp, and for a moment, I’m dizzy. Drunk with the finality that we are never getting out alive.
I can’t do this. I have to stop this.
“Not everybody shares your kink,” I tell the guy. “You know this is some cheap-ass porn shit, right?”
The bastard responds by stepping closer, just long enough to kick the girl on the floor. He kicks her hard, right in the ribs, and she’s tossed across the mattress with a muffled groan, landing on her back.
“Take out your gag,” he tells her.
Wordlessly, she obeys, pulling the dirty, balled-up cloth from her mouth with a small retching sound. Great. Now I have to look her in the face and listen to her scream.
“You have one minute,” our captor says, cocking his gun and digging it harder into Avery’s temple. She whimpers. The girl on the mattress trembles violently. I almost throw up.
My heart rate skyrockets. You have one minute. One minute to turn into a monster.
How am I supposed to get it up for this? How in the fuck? A feeling akin to acid rushes through my veins. What other fucking choice do I have?
I start to unbutton my jeans.
No choice. Pull down the zipper.
No choice. Plead wordlessly with the girl on the ground, our eyes locked in some kind of silent exchange. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so fucking sorry.
I have no choice but to kneel down on the mattress and shove down my pants. The girl shrinks away from me, her green eyes begging me to stop.
“Please,” she rasps. “Please don’t hurt me.”
I hold my hands out to her in a gesture of peace, tears pricking at my eyes. “He’ll kill us all if I don’t. I’ll try to be … gentle.”
She squeezes her eyes shut, trembling violently, as I loom over her. “I’m supposed to be getting married,” she gasps. “What if God doesn’t forgive me?”
She parts her knees slightly, looking down at herself in the place where she’s just been violated. The place where she’s been broken for the first time.
There is blood. He wasn’t gentle.
“Thirty seconds,” the guy with the gun barks.
Avery lets out a sob, struggling against the strong arms trapping her in their grip. “Don’t,” she says to me. “Don’t do it! Let him shoot me!”
Our captor responds by hitting Avery in the face with the side of his gun. Crunch! Blood appears at her lips as she groans in pain. I wonder if he dislodged a tooth.
“Continue,” he says, waving the gun at me.
I waver, and the girl on the ground sees it. She grabs my wrists. “Just do it,” she says suddenly. “Just do it and maybe he’ll let us go.”
I don’t know this girl, but I do know she’s lying. She knows just as well as I do that none of us are getting out of this room alive. Not me, not her, and definitely not Avery.
“What’s your name,” I whisper to the girl.
She hesitates. “Penny,” she says finally.
“Penny, this is gonna hurt. I’m so sorry.”
She nods, lying back in surrender, her entire body tensed in preparation for the pain she knows is coming. I try to be gentle, I try so hard to be reverent with her, but I might as well be torturing her; it would hurt just the same. Instinctively, I grab her hand. I remember her saying something about God. “Penny, do you want to pray?”
Her eyes widen, something registering behind the agony. “Yes,” she weeps.
I can’t swallow around the lump in my throat. “You should. You should pray.”
“You should hurry the fuck up,” our captor says, and a second later, there’s a deafening sound as he holds the gun next to my head and pulls the trigger.
The world explodes beside my ear. My head feels like it might crumble into tiny, bloody pieces. Penny is screaming as she holds on to me. Avery is screaming as the masked fucker holds her tightly in his free arm. I can’t hear a fucking thing, just an incessant angry buzz as blood drips from my ear. He blew my fucking eardrum, I think, too dazed to be angry about it. My brain cells feel like they’ve been blown apart, and they’re trying to find their way back together inside my skull. It’s so loud in my ear and a deafening silence, all at once, that I can’t explain nor understand. Blood from my ear drips down onto Penny’s bare skin, joining us in violence, in pain.
Penny’s face twists into pure terror as the masked man points his gun straight at her face and starts to count down. “Five…” he taunts. “Four… Three…”
Penny comes alive, grabbing at me, guiding me down into her. I’m not hard, and, at first, I think this will be impossible, but she’s already so wet down there with blood that entering her is almost no effort at all. I choke as Penny starts to murmur words under her breath.
The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. Her voice shakes as she pulls me into her, the pain making her scream. I still, not wanting to move a muscle, and hurt her more.
He maketh me lie down in green pastures...
Penny pushes up against me, and I start to move.
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
I know this Psalm from twelve years of Catholic school. And it breaks my fucking soul that she chose this one, of all the prayers she could be saying. She’s not asking for forgiveness.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
She’s preparing for death.
For yo
u are with me.
She squeezes my hand, as she keeps her eyes trained on mine.
A boot slams into my back, right under my ribs, forcing me harder into poor broken Penny. She screeches, her fingers clawing at the mattress, as she continues to whisper unintelligible words. I watch her lips move, trying to pick up the words again.
… in the presence of my enemies.
Another kick to my back. Another ragged scream from Penny.
You anoint my head with oil.
I watch as blood from my broken eardrum drips onto her cheek.
My cup overflows.
I’m so sorry, I want to tell this girl. I don’t want to do this. But nothing I say could ever comfort her enough.
“You’re not finished until you’re finished,” the masked man grinds out, his distorted voice reaching my blown eardrum through what seems like an entire ocean.
“You have to keep going,” Penny urges me.
“I can’t,” I choke.
“Think about somebody you love,” she says. “I’ll try to stop screaming.”
I have to keep going.
I pull back on Penny’s hips, as gently as I fucking dare, fucking her deeper, and she claps a hand over her mouth to drown out an anguished moan. Try as I might, I’m not very gentle. I’m not exactly aroused. Her blood is the lubricant that moves our bodies against each other. It’s repulsive and horrific, and at this rate, I’m never going to finish. I’m just hoping my body can take over and get us all out of this alive.
I close my eyes, and there she is.
Avery.
And not the Avery who’s beaten and bruised with no life left in her eyes. Avery Capulet, the girl who lit the world on fire wherever she went. Avery, who always walked around with a lift to her chin. Avery, whose gold-flecked eyes give me a bewildering surge of adrenaline every time we look at each other.
It’s awful with Penny. It’s fucking horrible. But I think of Avery, on her back, moaning. Happy. Begging me for more with a smile. Fisting my t-shirt. Kissing me hard. Saying my name.
It does the trick.
The halfhearted pumps of my hips become the real thing. Penny is in agony, but after I get a few strokes in, she starts to loosen up a little.
And I don’t want this—I don’t want this, I don’t fucking want this—but I do it anyway. Avery bent over my couch. Avery bent over my bed. Avery’s fingernails in my back. Avery crying Rome, Rome, Rome, her voice ragged with pleasure.
My hips jerk forward, and I come. It’s a death sentence. The thought rings loud and clear in my mind. This moment will end everything. Everything.
I pull myself away from Penny, and she pulls herself into the fetal position in the center of the mattress, sobbing loudly. It takes me a minute to stand up and tuck myself back into my jeans. A guy in my condition shouldn’t be fucking anybody. When I’m finally on my feet, I toss a shrug in his direction like this isn’t killing me.
“Hope you can get off on that tonight.” I can’t manage even a dickish smile.
He throws Avery to the side like a rag doll, and everything in me freezes as if my veins run with ice instead of blood. I’ve been keeping up this act because letting it go will make us easier targets. What I didn’t count on was that there’s a much easier target, crumpled there on the mattress.
I rush to Avery’s side, helping her up, as we watch in shock. As that fucking bastard hauls Penny up by her hair. Her throat must be raw from all the screaming. He yanks her up high, so high that he can press his face to hers, staring deep into her eyes.
“Penny. Look at me.”
Penny whimpers, but she does it. She looks right into the eyes of the man who has destroyed her, and I wonder what she sees.
“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,” Penny says rapidly, the end of her anguished prayer, “and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever…”
I don’t even have time to anticipate what comes next.
He shoves Penny down to her knees, puts the gun to her temple, and fires.
Blood rains down on us. Avery’s mouth is stuck open wide in a silent scream that becomes a real scream. The captor gives a little nod—a job well done, he seems to say. His hand is still wound up in the dead girl’s hair. He gives it an experimental tug, then uses it to drag Penny’s lifeless body out of the room, leaving a thick smear of blood in her wake. The slam of the door is like another gunshot.
Then click. Click. Click. The fourth lock hits home, and I burst out of my skin.
Avery’s still screaming, but she runs with me, the sound tearing through my soul. I meet her at the door, and we pound on it like we have a chance. My fist sings, then screams with her. I only hit harder. We have to get out of here. We have to get out of here. If it’s Avery with a bullet through her head next, then everything is over for me.
The door doesn’t give, and stars explode in the front of my mind. I switch to the cinder block walls, clawing at them. My fingernails chip and shatter. Avery’s scream lengthens to a howl, and the next time I look at her, she has bloodied fists. There is nothing but her howling. There is nothing but her despair.
“He killed her,” she shrieks. “He killed her, he shot her, he killed her—”
I try to gather her in my arms and hold her tight, the way she likes, but she’s wild, a whirlwind, and she twists out of my arms. I pound the door with her until my skin splits. Until we’re both breathing hard. Until we both back away, reality setting in.
We’re never getting out of here alive.
He will just keep going and going and going until we’re empty shells. Worse than empty shells. Until we’re rapists and murderers, and we don’t even care anymore. It won’t make a dent. No impact. No escape.
Avery grabs my hand and pulls me toward her. For once, her breathing is steady, but she puts my arms around her anyway and gets as close as she can.
“Tighter.” The steel in her voice gets lighter and floats away. “Rome.”
The way she says my name tells me everything I need to know. “We can’t stay. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“I know,” I tell her.
“We have to leave this place. We have to be free.”
“I know.” I take her face in my hands. “How do you want to do it?”
A thousand possibilities flash through my mind. It’ll be fucking tricky, getting us both off the earth without one of us getting left behind. We’ll have to work out the finer details. We’ll have to plan them, and then we’ll have to be ready to follow through. We’ll have to jump into a black pit with no bottom, with no end. I’ll have her hand in mine, and the pills from my pocket, and that’s it.
There’s only one answer.
“Together.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
AVERY
Together.
Rome’s voice echoes in my head, over and over, until there is only a constant wash of sound. The pain from my IUD burns across my entire belly, but it’s easier to ignore now that I know we have a plan. And we do have a plan. I saw it in his eyes. He knows.
I go to roll over on the mattress and discover I’m already flat on my back, eyes fixed upon a dark ceiling. How did that happen? Was it that last little burst of pain I felt minutes ago? Or was it hours ago?
I did something to my hands when I tried to beat down the door. They’re covered in dried blood, my fingertips raw and throbbing, nails stripped down to stubs. Oh, well. It doesn’t matter anymore. Now that I know what comes next, I think of this place as some kind of limbo, an in-between for our damned souls. I think I died the night I turned twenty-five at that stupid party. I think I fell into that pool along with my father, a bullet in my heart, and bled out in the cold water under a starless San Francisco sky.
At least, I wish that was what had become of me. What a merciful end that would have been. They would have printed my name in big letters on the front page of The New York Times. There would have been a funeral and vases full of blood red roses. Maybe
Rome would have even come along to spit on the door of the Capulet mausoleum, after my dead body was sealed in nice and tight with all the other dead people I’ve been grieving most of my life.
A girl can dream of a better death, can’t she?
I suppose there is one thing I’m grateful for in all of this. One person. He’s lying beside me, his blue eyes clouded with worry. He thinks I’m going mad. Baby, I’m not going mad. I’m already there.
“What are you laughing at?” His hand comes down on the inside of my elbow, fingertips light. “Aves. What’s funny?”
“Ships can sink so fast,” I whisper. It’s not that I’m laughing, not really. It’s not funny. Sinking ships are not a laughing matter. The sound that is coming from me is a laugh that should be a sob. “You don’t have to wait as long to die. You just drown. You know?”
“We won’t have to wait much longer.” He’s turned on his side toward me. I want to turn toward him, but, somehow, I don’t have the energy.
I close my eyes and imagine myself sinking through the mattress into frigid ocean water. It would be cold as fuck at first. But eventually, it would be dark and quiet. I would be at one with my sister. I would finally know whether it was peaceful to drown.
It would be more peaceful than this.
“Good.” My mouth is dry. It’s so hard to swallow. “I’m tired, Rome.”
It’s like the words have summoned him—the bastard in the mask. The door clangs open with its death-knell sound, and things happen fast—faster than a ship sinking. Heavy footsteps.
A dull thread of pain as I try to sit up and fail.
The hiss and deep pop of a tranquilizer gun firing.
It flashes in the air above us. Rome holds out his hand, but it doesn’t matter. The dart flies into the middle of his chest. His body thuds back on the mattress. I can’t take my eyes off him. He looks so pale.
In his weakened state, it doesn’t take long for the tranquilizers to work.
“Rome,” I croak. This is not the plan. “Rome—”
The masked man reaches down and hauls me up by my hair. My scalp screams in protest. I hate the whimper I let out—it still hurts, damn it. When he moves me, it burns everywhere. He drags me onto the chair and wrenches my arms behind my back. I can move my legs freely, but my arms are tightly bound behind me.
VENGEFUL QUEEN Page 6
